the belief that ‘order = hierarchy’ is one of the most pernicious mythologies. and it is equally pernicious whether it convinces someone that order is bad, or when it convinces them that hierarchy is good.
order is good. hierarchy is bad. they are not linked.
What the fuck is ‘order’
i mean it’s not limited to this but one example for what i’m talking about is “socially agreed on protocol for acceptable behavior”
romantic notions that people can all just do ~whatever they want~ are childish and ultimately rooted in liberalism.
For this reply we’ve secretly swapped tumblr communist leviathan-supersystem with my conservative Mormon divisional Chief. Let’s see if anyone notices.
Your Divisional Chief Is Correct Though
Actually, “doing whatever you want” and “no need for hierarchy uwu” were both kinda steelmanned by Marcuse with his concept of ~surplus repression~.
The way he does it is simple but kinda subtle, and I’m bad at explaining it, he says it, like, more persuasively and less naively - but basically you don’t *actually* want to do that stupid shit [1] to the extent that people would need to shun you, call the cops, etc, right?
Self-image, self-interest, seeking immediate peers’ approval, etc - necessary repression in his Freudian-ish terms - would quite suffice for a more laid-back life, like they suffice in making (many) people e.g. wash their hands and flush toilets. But to do shit like Taylorist discipline, you need to beat people down more actively, past acquiescence and into submission - hence the “surplus”.
[1] Not unless you’re destitute, sick, angry, wasted, crazy, etc, which he kinda discounts, because, in his time and place, capitalism seemed to him about to eliminate glaring scarcity and obvious Dickensian misery. I mean, of course that looks incorrect now - but imo not that awful of him as far as extrapolation goes.
That sounds testable enough. Build a sufficiently low-scarcity intentional community with population and norms initially selected for prosociality, easy access to psych treatment etc. and let people do what they want, and see if it inevitably degenerates into either hierarchy or chaos. My money would be on “it probably could be done as long as authoritarians don’t get to fuck with it”
4 months ago · tagged #playing your cards right #promethea's empiricism fetish #still bitter for '36 #stalin you asshole don't fuck with other people's experiments #fortunately syria doesn't have stalinists #also how on earth did the us become rojava's air force #lifegoals level #whatever the outcome is #the state of our knowledge wins #unless authoritarians fuck with it #we already know that ruins everything we don't need more replications · 191 notes · source: leviathan-supersystem · .permalink
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